Rampant Botting making the game unplayable for legitimate players.

[Demonviper]

Botting, at least on Asura is now beyond a joke. Every Apex camp is full of parties that never leave and that are obviously automated, It's impossible to avoid them but it gets worse out of frustration today I started a new character, after running outside into the ronfaure I encountered a level 50 thief in the starting RSE with no subjob and a doublet running the same route over and over killing low level mobs, I continued on to encounter a different thief again level 50 doing the same thing in a different section of the zone. I did a /sea of the zone and it was CRAWLING with characters exactly like that.

Has SE abandoned all attempts at controlling the botting situation? It has reached the point where the game feels unplayable to even a 15 year veteran due to it and I cannot in good faith recommend final fantasy XI to MMO playing friends anymore either.

I am begging you square enix, do SOMETHING about the blatant botting, this whole server is now mostly exp bots and mercenary's (who are likely also automating) spamming yell and congesting endgame camps 24/7, now it's even spilling over to the starting zones.

SE you've already lost my recommendation, I think you will also soon lose my sub. Your inaction is destroying my favourite game.

[Uriah]

I would say it's gotten ridiculous, but it's so far past ridiculous there isn't a suitable description of it anymore.

[Sfchakan]

The players posting on the Japanese side also complain about it as well. Both communities feel like SE isn't actually doing anything about the problem.

[Alhanelem]

Sadly it's true, but at the same time, SE is also in part to blame for making some of the grinds so extreme, ML 30 is actually more work than 2100JP was. If the grind was less silly I think fewer people would be tempted to bot it.

[Demonviper]

Maybe but that doesn't excuse the behaviour of the Asura player base nor does it excuse SE for failing to address this massive issue. I won't make excuses for cheaters, If people don't like the content they're free to play something else and SE should pay attention to that drop in sub numbers and make better content.

It also doesn't explain why there are around 15 level 50 subjobless thieves running set paths around ronfaure killing level 3 mobs either. SE's negligence and complete lack of interest in properly maintaining this beloved game does.

[Uriah]

Those level 50 running around starter zones on every server are spark bots. When square decided to cap sparks they effectively raised their sub count 10 fold because all these bots are new accounts that have to be bought from square and restarted over and over.

So now they're making (A LOT) more money by letting them do that.

[Demonviper]

I'm quite sure they've done the math on how many people will quit if they ignore bots vs how many botter accounts are paying them money. Very Cynical and I'm going to make sure anyone who asks me about what MMOs are worth playing in the future (I have two subs on XI and 1 on XIV currently) know how SE ignores these problems and that they should avoid the two final fantasy MMOs.

[Dzspdref]

The most obvious answer is for everyone that is NOT a bot/RMT is to NOT pay them gil/IRL monies to power-level them up, or stop buying gil online. Then if THAT happens, the RMT/bots will LOSE money on exp'ing and start going away to other games, and then problems will be (partially) solved.
.
But as we know that will NEVER completely happen since SO few people are patient enough to do their work themselves - even though it is SO damn simple nowadays to get Lv.1 → 99 in less than a few days all by yourself - that it is bound to be somewhat viable for them to remain.

[Demonviper]

That won't happen, it doesn't happen in any game. The only thing that keeps mmos playable is policing the issue so it never gets so bad that it destroys the ability to play legitimately. XI is currently way over that line.

[Tarmarkvar]

I didn't like it either, but there's 15 other servers where this isn't a problem.